Luck
by Morgana Maeve
Summary: Slight crack::Axel.Luxord::First POV: He makes playing cards really difficult.


Luck

Morgana Maeve

8/10/08 – Axel/Luxord. Another pairing that has no fan-base.

Warnings: Sheer stupidity. My mind can't take this anymore.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters here. They belong to Square and Disney.

-o-

It is, quite possibly, the worst feeling in the world to know that you are about to lose and not be able to do anything about it. The inevitability punches the stomach, assaults the mind, and makes logical thought entirely impossible.

I know, because naturally, I'm in that position now.

Damn him and his infuriating smirk! I want to burn right off his smug face, but knowing Luxord, he'll just stop time and laugh as he leaves me frozen in my seat.

I know I have no good. It's not possible for me to have any good cards. Every single card I've played up has been a trash card. Which isn't possible if you were playing with a _normal_ person – if I was playing Marluxia, for example – and I know from that gleam in Luxord's eye that he's doing it. Sitting there, with his hands folded under his chin, I _know_ he's messing with my hand. But I'll be damned if I call him out on it.

Another zero pointer in the trash pile. How the hell do all my cards come out to be zero pointers?

That's a bad way to phrase it. I know why I'm losing. I just can't figure out how he's doing it.

I understand how Luxord fixes the dice games. I've caught him making weird little hand signals beneath the table ("Oh look at that, I've dropped my pickle. Let me go get it."), and I know that he can stop time at the precise moment the die lands on the number he wants, but what I can't figure out is _how he's manipulating the damn cards!_

My hand hesitates at the top of my card pile, and I glare at the card I have to match, pretty flowers withering in imagined fire. The edges of the card begin to smoke.

"Now Axel, don't go destroying another one of my decks," Luxord cautions, still smiling genially, accent as annoying as it is fake. I've heard him speak without it before; he just does it to get attention. I turn my glare to him, hoping to set some nonessential part of him on fire, but his grin simply widens, and he adds on, "It's your turn. Why don't you choose a card?"

I swear, if this is another trash card, I'm going to cut him a new deck, to use terms he's familiar with.

It's a zero card. I'm going to kill him.

"You're deliberately screwing me up!" I yell, slapping my hands on the table. Larxene looks up from her book with daggers in her eyes, and the air buzzes with electricity. We all sweat. "You're cheating, and everybody knows it."

"But Axel, I'm doing just fine. Luxord's not cheating."

That's because he lets you win, Demyx, you great idiot.

"Exactly, Axel." Luxord flashes a quick grin at Demyx, and he flushes, looking down at his pile in embarrassed silence. They have got to be kidding me. "If I was cheating, why would Demyx be winning?" His flashes the grin at me, and I resist the urge to knock my fist into his teeth.

I would love to say what I'm thinking, that he's letting the water-worker win because his bed is cold and needs filling, but I know that'll just about kill Demyx, and Luxord would just deny it anyway. So instead, I fix him with a steely glare and say, "Why don't you tell me?"

"Demyx is a better player than you."

That's a low blow and entirely inaccurate, but it still makes Demyx blush with wriggling pleasure, gazing up at Luxord with adoring puppy-dog eyes. Yeah, that's right, Demyx, keep it up. I'll bet you flunked sex ed. You were the one in the back goofing off.

I don't realize I'm staring at Demyx harshly until he shifts uncomfortably and fingers the cards on the table, seeking some way to ignore me. I try and school my face into something less formidable.

"Or maybe you're just cheating."

"Stop being such a sore loser, Axel!"

"Oh, you're on his side now?" The air wavers warningly.

"Perhaps if you weren't so violent, you'd have more friends."

Luxord is evil. He really is. Evil and smart. Not like Marluxia, who's just evil and stupid. This guy's the real deal, even if his damn accent isn't.

"Maybe if you got rid of that accent, people wouldn't look at you funny." Luxord's face blanks out, losing all hints of fake-ass emotion, and I tally one point for me on the mental scoreboard.

"Luxord's accent isn't fake! Stop being mean, Axel." It really doesn't take much to make Demyx start whining, and that's what he does now, giving me those weird, pouting stares that only work for cute teenage girls. It doesn't work for him. And it doesn't work on me.

"It's as fake as his hair color is," I say petulantly. Big mistake. Wipe that point from the board.

"Would you care to see?" he asks dangerously, eyes very amused, very cold blue. Vexen should have gotten those eyes.

Demyx doesn't understand the laced innuendo, and he leaps at the chance to defend his new idol. "Yeah, let's see, Luxord."

I have to stop and stare at Demyx for that one. I've heard the other members say some pretty nasty things about him, but I never once believed that he was that dumb. Or maybe it's not dumbness per se, but a strange sort of innocence that never really left him. All I know is that I have no intention or inclination to see what Luxord has to offer.

Well okay, maybe a part of me does, but purely for comparison reasons only. It'd be nice to beat the jerk at his own game, even if it is for something as juvenile as who's got the bigger pencil. And I'd do it too, if Roxas wouldn't string me up and flog me half to death if he found out. Yes, I said flog. He has one. I don't know where he got it, I don't how he got, and nor do I care to know how he got it. He has one. And he's not afraid to use it.

I stand up to put a restraining had on Luxord's shoulder, but his fingers are already at his waistline. I think Demyx finally understands now what Luxord really meant, because he's up and squealing into a corner, cards discarded and forgotten.

"Stupid," I say to the gambler. "Did you think he'd fall for that?"

"It was worth a try," he sighs, gathering his cards, shuffling them aimlessly. I shake my head in disgust and walk off. But I still have the last word.

A shout that sounds suspiciously like my name echoes up behind me, and I slip my finger to my lip. The little flame still burns on my index finger, pleasant warmth on my unfeeling body.

-o-

It's slight crack, what can I say? This is really starting to get to me. I don't want to do this anymore. (But I will, because I'm almost done, and want to prove that I _can_ do it.)

Anyway, the game I've so wonderfully (horribly) described in this story is an actual game played a lot in Japan. It's called Hana-Fuda, and it uses a deck of forty-eight cards with flowers drawn on them instead of numbers. There are twelve different suites, and each flower represents the month in which it blooms.

I used a version of Honeymoon Hana-Fuda, which traditionally calls for two players, but Demyx snuck in, so I bent the rules a little bit. I couldn't find the real Japanese rules for the game, so I based this off a Hawaiian version of it. The point of the game is to match the cards placed face up on the table. Each player receives eight (I believe) cards. If a player pulls up a zero pointer card, it goes into the rubbish pile. It's in this version that three players are acceptable.

I wasn't too clear on the rules, so this all might seem a little confusing and is probably all wrong. Feel free to blame my stupidity when it comes to card games; I lose at everything except Egyptian War.

Read and review, please.


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